REWIND
New Delhi, 15 September 2022
Sino-Indian Talks
FIRST STEP TOWARDS SETTLEMENT
By Inder Jit
(Released o n 8 December 1981)
All those interested in seeing India
and China resolve their border dispute and revive friendly relations between
the two countries are keeping their finger crossed. India’s delegation to the
forthcoming Sino-Indian talks is expected to begin preliminary consultations in
Beijing this morning. Substantive talks will start tomorrow or on Thursday. All
manner of speculative stories have been carried by the media on the possible
outcome of the talks. Some of these have been overly optimistic and some unduly
pessimistic. New Delhi is approaching the talks positively, cautiously and
realistically. Beijing, for its part, appears to be adopted an identical
approach according to available indications. Happily, both sides seem keen to
ensure that the parleys do not run into rough weather or, bluntly put, fail
even if they do not turn out to be successful. One thing alone is certain.
Nothing dramatic is likely to happen one way or the other. True, miracles can
never be ruled out. But in this case there seems to be little scope for any.
Some commentators have read a lot
more than is justified in the fact that the Beijing talks are being held later
than anticipated. Following the visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr.
Huang Hua, to New Delhi in June last, the parleys were expected in September.
The “delay” of over two months has been attributed by some to “fresh hurdles
and misunderstandings.” This is not so. There is no particular reason for what
has come to pass. The delay has occurred mainly due to what may be described as
the time-table problem of finding mutually convenient dates for meetings in a
world beset by increasing bilateral, group and global consultations. (September
was largely taken up by the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in
Melbourne and October by the Cancun meet.) There is no gainsaying the fact that
India’s decision to include the Speaker of Arunachal Pradesh in its
Parliamentary delegation to the Asian Conference on Population and Development
inadvertently caused a breeze. But good sense on both sides eventually helped
to resolve the issue smoothly.
In fact, it needs to be remembered
that the Foreign Ministers of India and China took every care at their meeting
in New Delhi to ensure that their decision to hold a “purposeful discussion to
arrive at a settlement” of the border issue should proceed smoothly.
Accordingly, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao and Mr. Huang Hua decided not to identify
the level at which the first meeting should be held. Instead, they agreed that
these “should be undertaken at the appropriate levels” which left both sides
free to make proposals in the best mutual interest. New Delhi and Beijing have
now decided through common consent to hold initial talks at the intermediate
level, namely, that of the Secretaries. This has its advantages. A Secretary is
in a position to develop policy as things go along, which is not possible at a
lower level or that of Ambassadors, who have their own constraints. Between
1958 and 1962, the level of Sino-Indian talks fluctuated from the level of the
Prime Ministers to that of Directors in the Ministry which, in retrospect, was
perhaps not the best way of handling a sensitive matter.
Both India and China have also
happily decided to use the talks to improve the overall climate between the two
countries. Consequently, the talks will not be limited to the border question
but will also explore ways and means of enlarging the areas of cooperation in
various fields including cultural affairs, trade, agriculture and industry. (A
cultural accord was expected to be signed during Mr. Huang Hua’s visit. But
this could not materialize owing to lack of time.) India’s delegation has been
constituted accordingly and New Delhi has conveyed to Beijing its interest in
certain specific things, namely, biogas units, mini hydel plants, small-scale
cement factories and water and soil conservancy. Beijing has communicated
broadly its own areas of interest. These include certain sectors of India’s
textile industry, open pit mining, shellac industry and diamond cutting. India
and China have already exchanged delegations in regard to the manufacturer of machine tools. More such in
other fields may well follow.
Essentially, the ideas is to
generate enough goodwill as will help resolve the longstanding and complex
India-China boundary question, complicated by a succession of unfortunate
events since the issue first erupted in 1959. The Chinese Vice-Premier, Mr.
Deng Xioping, offered a package deal in this regard in June last year and
repeated it in his talk in Beijing early this year with Dr. Subramaniam Swamy,
the Janata leader, and India’s Ambassador, Mr. Shankar Bajpai. Specifically, he
proposed a settlement on the basis of Chinese acceptance of the McMahon Line in
exchange for Indian acceptance of the Chinese claim to Aksai Chin. The offer
contains little that is new. It repeats in essence China’s old offer made by
Mr. Chou En-lai in his six-point proposal when he visited New Delhi in April
1960 for talks with India’s Prime Minister, Mr. Nehru. The difference, if any,
lies only in one thing. Mr. Deng has formulated the original offer more
explicitly. He has stated that “while we can recognize the present line of
actual control in the eastern sector, India should recognize the status quo in
the western sector.”
Beijing has been seeking for some
time now New Delhi’s views on Mr. Deng’s package proposal. Only recently,
China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Han Nianlong, said, “we are
waiting for India’s response.” But in doing so, Beijing ignores the fact that
time has not stood still since April 1960. Much has happened in the past two
decades and more that has roused national feelings and complicated the
question. In the Aksai Chin area, China today occupies some 2,000 to 2,500 sq
miles more than the 12,000 sq miles it did in April 1960. What is more, this
additional area was taken by the force of arms left behind bitter memories but
also caused both Houses of Parliament to adopt a unanimous resolution on the
subject. This resolution, moved by Mr. Nehru and adopted by members of
Parliament while standing in an emotion-charged atmosphere, stated that India
would not rest until every inch of aggression was vacated from its sacred soil.
India would have been justified in
responding to Mr. Deng’s offer as an invitation to repeat its own earlier stand
on Mr. Chou En-lai’s six-point proposal of April 1960. But New Delhi has deliberately
desisted from doing so in the interest of genuinely seeking a settlement which
is at once fair and honourable to both sides. Nothing illustrates this better
than the statement by Mr. Narasimha Rao in the Lok Sabha on July 2, 1980, in response
to calling attention notice regarding Mr. Deng’s reported offer on the border
question. Mr. Rao, it may be recalled, stated: “After a considerable lapse with
it once more. This itself is a positive step. It may be that ways other than
the package solution suggested by the Chinese Government could prove more
effective. In any event, I am sure the House will agree that we should proceed
forward meaningfully while also keeping our best interest in mind.” This basic
approach still holds.
Some China experts have of late come
out with new archival material and fresh evidence in regard to “the truth”
about India’s border with China both in the western and eastern sectors. One
expert, who has been supported by the Dr. Kotnis Memorial Committee, has gone
to the astonishing length of even suggesting that Sir Olaf Caroe had in the
late thirties tried to give McMahon Line an ex post facto legal basis by
getting some of his officials to fake the 1929 edition of Aitchison’s Treaties,
which contained the original version of the 1913-14 Simla Conference of
Tibetan, Chinese and British plenipotentiaries. New Delhi has its own view on
this. It has gone through all evidence --- new and old --- and continues to do
so. In fact, the Foreign Office reaffirms the stand taken by Mr. Narasimha Rao
in reply to a discussion on the subject in the Lok Sabha on July 31 last. Mr.
Rao then stated that “the Government who keep abrest of all important research
on the subject are fully convinced that the alignment shown in our maps conforms to the true international
border.”
All in all, India and China will
have to adopt a political approach and not get bogged in the legalistic
minefield of evidence and counter evidence. There is imperative need for the
two to recapture the atmosphere of the early fifties and revive their
friendship, uninfluenced by third countries. Both New Delhi and Beijing have
together a role to play in a world which once again finds itself on the
threshold of a cold war. Moscow is expectedly taking keen interest in the Beijing
parleys. One of its top China experts, Mr. Kapista, visited New Delhi recently
to share his analysis of China today --- and presumably offer his “informal
advice” in dealing with Beijing. Again, Mr. Kuznetsov, Soviet Deputy Premier,
who deals with South-East Asia, is due in the Union Capital tomorrow, causing
not a few eyebrows to raise in the diplomatic world. New Delhi and Beijing have
to move warily in a situation where it would be unwise and impractical to
expect results overnight. The Beijing talks will have more than served their
purpose if they constitute the first meaningful step towards an overdue
settlement.---INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature
Alliance)
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